Universal Pictures crafts a whimsical tale of courage using some truly stunning CGI animation in THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX. Based on the award-winning book of the same name, the film features some all-star voice work from the likes of Sigourney Weaver, Dustin Hoffman, and Matthew Broderick. The story begins in the European city of Dor, a picturesque town know for its amazing soup. When the soup-obsessed rat Roscuro (Hoffman) accidentally brings about a tragedy in the royal kingdom, the Dor King falls into mourning, both soup and rats are banned, and the skies turn to gray. Roscuro soon finds himself living in the dank darkness of a place called Rat World. Nearby, in Mouse World, we finally meet our hero, Despereaux (Broderick). Despereaux is an unusually small mouse with some rather over-sized dreams. Despite his small stature, he longs to live a bold and exciting life, and he chafes at the dictums of Mouse World--where mice are taught to live quietly in fear. When Despereaux goes so far as to befriend the human Princess Pea (Emma Watson), he is booted from Mouse World down into the miseries of Rat World. There he meets Roscuro, and together the two decide to carry out their own individual quests and right what has been wronged. While Roscuro soon finds himself going astray, Despereaux sticks to his guns--or rather, his sewing-needle sword--and he fights to bring joy and freedom back to the city of Dor.

The film remains pretty faithful to the book, although it does trim down some of the quirkier aspects of the novel. Yet the story is still refreshingly dark in places, and is reminiscent of such classic tales as THE SECRET OF NIMH and WATERSHIP DOWN--smart cartoons that were always about much more than mere cuddly talking animals.

The Kingdom of Dor is an enchanted land where the peasants are happy, people don’t question talking mice, mysterious cooks materialize out of vegetables, and soup is not just food, but a way of life. The happiness of the people of Dor is short-lived, though, when a well-intentioned rat named Roscuro (voiced by Dustin Hoffman) gets a little too close to the good smelling soup, and in a string of unfortunate events causes the demise of the queen of the kingdom. Because the queen drowned in her own soup, and because the accident was caused by a rat, soup and rats are banished from the kingdom. Dark grey clouds roll over the countryside and cover the kingdom in gloom and anguish....read the full review

Reel.com 6 of 10The Tale of Despereaux began life as a children's book and the animated film version does its best to reproduce the sounds of a storybook. The characters, especially the brave little titular mouse, are earnest rather than wisecracking, and Sigourney Weaver speaks in soothing, empathetic tones as the narrator, just like Mom. The movie might have looked a bit more like a lush picture book, though, if it had been hand-drawn rather than computer-generated...Computers are now the default tools of the animation world, of course, and animators have produced many stunning and even personal images using them. But the animation in Despereaux is hardly state-of-the-art, and so in exchange for that token modernity we get the same waxy, deformed humans a computer could've struggled with in the late `90s. The mammals fare a bit better, but the movie's limited charm comes from its old-fashioned, homespun quality, not the CGI breeze rustling through tiny CGI mouse hairs...If computers have indeed turned animation into a more competitive game than it was a few decades ago, The Tale of Despereaux is ill-equipped; an unfair observation, perhaps, but difficult to sidestep...Allow me then to delicately mention that following Flushed Away and especially Ratatouille, Despereaux's world of aspiring rodents is a little mustier than its predecessors...As children's entertainment, The Tale of Despereaux has its heart in the right place, and might rightly be taken as an antidote to its screechier, talking-dog-laden, live-action cousins. But with Pixar's advances towering on one side and classic Disney features on the other, this wan little picture might just as well slip, mouse-like, into the cracks. - Jesse Hassenger

Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10"The Tale of Despereaux" is one of the most beautifully drawn animated films I've seen, rendered in enchanting detail and painterly colors by an art department headed by Oliver Adam. With a story centering on a big-eared little mouse named Despereaux, a sniffy rat named Roscuro and various other members of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, it is a joy to look at frame by frame, and it would be worth getting the Blu-ray to do that...I am not quite so thrilled by the story, which at times threatens to make Gormenghast seem straightforward. There are three societies with interconnections (mouse, rat and human), plus a man made of vegetables who possibly runs his social life out of the produce market and maybe dates dates...Roscuro (with a Ratso voice by Dustin Hoffman) is first on the scene, racing from a ship in port to sniff at the kingdom's annual spring festival, celebrated by the royal chef Andre (Kevin Kline) by creating a new soup to be shared by every citizen. Alas, he falls in the soup of the queen, who then falls in the soup herself and puts the king in mourning. The king then banishes soup and rats from his realm, which is little matter to the rats, who have a highly evolved civilization somewhere belowstairs...The movie is based on four Newbery Award-winning novels by Kate DiCamillo, all unread by me, but somehow reminded me of another wonderful mouse story, Ben and Me, by the great Richard Lawson...I suppose the plot will be easier for DiCamillo's readers to untangle, and that those too young or too old to have read them will nevertheless appreciate the look of the film. What I'd like to see is this same team take on a better-organized screenplay. Has anyone read the Gormenghast trilogy? There's a classic that would look just about righty with this look. - Roger Ebert